How to have an annoying website

[jamieh]

A sequel to my "How to be annoying on instant messenger" thread.

~ Cover it with sparklee stars and such
~ Have an annoying song blasting in the background
~ You make an error typing HTML and you can see some of it leaked on the page
~ CLICK HERE AND HERE AND HERE AND HERE
~ Banner ads. I can't for the LIFE OF ME think of ANYONE that actually CLICKS on a banner ad
~ Static backgrounds. This one is a matter of opinion, but I find pages with static backgrounds are hard to read
~ Bright turquoise backgrounds
~ Use the <blink> and <marquee> tags like there is no tomorrow


EDIT:


http://154.20.93.77:8000/myawesomewebpage/

How to be annoying: Do the exact opposite of everything on this page.

[yabbadabbadont]

Return a completely blank html page whenever Java, Javascript, and Flash are not installed/enabled, and also require that non-expiring cookies be enabled.

[MaxIBoy]

http://qref.planetquake.gamespy.com/ (Click on "Texture editing.")

Either you get an epically bad misuse of frames, or you get this:

[cardinals_fan]

Either you get an epically bad misuse of frames, or you get this:
I got the latter. Can you post a screenshot of the epically bad frames?

[MaxIBoy]

Sure.

[FuturePilot]

use deprecated tags

[cardinals_fan]

Sure.
A little bit of my soul just died ;)

[myusername]

limegreen or bright yellow text

[smartboyathome]

limegreen or bright yellow text

How about blazing yellow background with lime green text? Now THAT'S annoying and is liable to blinding people.

[-grubby]

Background music playing, invalid (X)HTML

[zmjjmz]

Design it in Frontpage (which invariably makes for a terrible site) and then leave marks of Frontpage in the header.
Oh, and make it all flash.

[MaxIBoy]

Or worse yet, Silverlight.

Anything which causes the URL to not change as you navigate the sight should be taken off the Internet.

Anything that only works on one browser should be taken off the Internet.

Anything with dead links or broken pictures should be taken off the Internet.


Here's a good guide to this sort of thing:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/html-hell.html

[rzrgenesys187]

Use as many animated GIF images as possible

[jamieh]

http://qref.planetquake.gamespy.com/ (Click on "Texture editing.")

Either you get an epically bad misuse of frames, or you get this:

What theme is that on the title bar of your browser?

EDIT: Sorry, quoted wrong site. Someone posted a screenshot with a cool theme. Too lazy to find it.

[Canis familiaris]

Fill it up with Flash and Silverlight and adverts.

Also use tons of popups.

Force users to use this device:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell

Mission Annoyance Completed.

[Ms_Angel_D]

Put every thing on one single page that is 50 miles long, and doesn't even have anchors to relevant information

Use a background image without using a table that has a solid background color to put your text in.

(this is most annoying on myspace) Use an animated background and some really hard to read text.

[billgoldberg]

Nice list, I'll add:

- use flash for everything

Flash is good for something but some sites either have a total flash site (this is acceptable in some cases) or use it for just about everything else (menu's, ...).

[SomeGuyDude]

Flash interfaces and audio that you can't shut off. Check this one out:

http://westwoodplazatheatreandcafe.com/

It's a local theater that's actually really cool, but what a HORRIFIC website.

[jamieh]

http://154.20.93.77:8000/myawesomewebpage/

How to be annoying: Do the exact opposite of everything on this page.

[billgoldberg]

http://154.20.93.77:8000/myawesomewebpage/

How to be annoying: Do the exact opposite of everything on this page.

Please do yourself and the internet a favor and remove that site.

My eyes still hurt.

[ddarsow]

My alltime favorite has to be the following disclaimer appearing on the page:

Having trouble using the menu bar at the top of each page? The problem is probably linked to your operating system or web browser. This site was redesigned using drop-down menus for easy navigation of all content. The menus are activated by a computer language known to web developers as Java scripting. When a user places the mouse cursor on one of the main menu topics, a sub-menu automatically drops down with other page links. Java scripting is what makes this function operate.

Technology being wonderful yet imperfect, Java won't work across all operating systems and browsers. For example, the drop-down menus on this site won't work on a Mac machine, nor will they work with the Firefox browser. This site was designed using data that indicates the vast majority of those surfing the web are on Windows-based computers. Most users are also browsing the web using Internet Explorer.

I regret that the navigation functions of this site won't work on every computer. The decision was made to accomodate the needs of the majority of users, while incorporating modern and easy navigation tools. As a service to those who are not able to access the drop-down menus, the following direct links should take you to the pages of this site. They are grouped by the same topics as the main menu selections.

To make matters worse, the "following direct links" do not exist!
I guess it is just too much to ask for a web developer to actually know how to create functional navigation.

[StitchJAcket]

The use of pre made layouts from frontpage on business websites COME ON!!!

[S0VERE1GN]

Use a myspace page to host your business from. but organize it like it was made by a 14-year old.

[S0VERE1GN]

My alltime favorite has to be the following disclaimer appearing on the page:

Having trouble using the menu bar at the top of each page? The problem is probably linked to your operating system or web browser. This site was redesigned using drop-down menus for easy navigation of all content. The menus are activated by a computer language known to web developers as Java scripting. When a user places the mouse cursor on one of the main menu topics, a sub-menu automatically drops down with other page links. Java scripting is what makes this function operate.

Technology being wonderful yet imperfect, Java won't work across all operating systems and browsers. For example, the drop-down menus on this site won't work on a Mac machine, nor will they work with the Firefox browser. This site was designed using data that indicates the vast majority of those surfing the web are on Windows-based computers. Most users are also browsing the web using Internet Explorer.

I regret that the navigation functions of this site won't work on every computer. The decision was made to accomodate the needs of the majority of users, while incorporating modern and easy navigation tools. As a service to those who are not able to access the drop-down menus, the following direct links should take you to the pages of this site. They are grouped by the same topics as the main menu selections.

To make matters worse, the "following direct links" do not exist!
I guess it is just too much to ask for a web developer to actually know how to create functional navigation.

i hope this was senior citizen's website.

[ddarsow]

i hope this was senior citizen's website.

No, believe it or not it is a site selling very expensive items. The site belongs to a very well known reptile breeder who regularly sells certain selectively bred color morphs of the green tree python for many thousands of dollars each!

Apparently, he only wants to sell to people running IE!

I must say that his books (he is also an author) are much higher quality than his web site!

[jamieh]

My alltime favorite has to be the following disclaimer appearing on the page:

Having trouble using the menu bar at the top of each page? The problem is probably linked to your operating system or web browser. This site was redesigned using drop-down menus for easy navigation of all content. The menus are activated by a computer language known to web developers as Java scripting. When a user places the mouse cursor on one of the main menu topics, a sub-menu automatically drops down with other page links. Java scripting is what makes this function operate.

Technology being wonderful yet imperfect, Java won't work across all operating systems and browsers. For example, the drop-down menus on this site won't work on a Mac machine, nor will they work with the Firefox browser. This site was designed using data that indicates the vast majority of those surfing the web are on Windows-based computers. Most users are also browsing the web using Internet Explorer.

I regret that the navigation functions of this site won't work on every computer. The decision was made to accomodate the needs of the majority of users, while incorporating modern and easy navigation tools. As a service to those who are not able to access the drop-down menus, the following direct links should take you to the pages of this site. They are grouped by the same topics as the main menu selections.

To make matters worse, the "following direct links" do not exist!
I guess it is just too much to ask for a web developer to actually know how to create functional navigation.

Javascript works fine on my Mac Pro :confused:

[billgoldberg]

Something that also used to bug me, but I haven't seen for a while, is custom scrolling bars.

Also sites like microsoft.com aka sites where it takes an hour to find what you looking for.

Slow websites with a bad search engine (ubuntuforums.org :p ).

Websites that use "we recommend browser x or y".

Websites that open up other websites.

Websites that resize the browser (or go fullscreen).

Websites where boxes come up.

Non text adds.

Websites with sound.

Websites that have a homepage that just displays an add and where you have a link "click here to continue".

Hard to read captchas.

iframes!

animated gifs.

Thumbnails that are actually resized full quality pictures.

...

[jamieh]

www.myspace.com
Couldn't be more simple :P

[benny bronx]

My favorite is going to a site and my comp slows to a crawl, open up NoScript and the list of js is too long to fit on the screen. The one positive about this is I say thank god I am not using IE and/or windows.

[init1]

http://www.gifs.net/Animation11/Words/Wow/wow_2.gif
Use animated gifs frequently
http://www.gifs.net/Animation11/Words/Wow/wow_2.gif

[Mr_JMM]

Could I possibly beg your forgiveness and grant me an exception?

I'm a website designer and so ordinarily, I would NEVER design a website that only works / looks correctly on certain OS / Browsers. It's really not difficult to design websites that work across all browsers and adding a separate CSS file is no problem.

However, I have a personal website that I'm completely revamping and one of it's purposes is to voice my near hatred of all things Micro$oft. When viewing my site with IE it displays a message (at the top of the usual content) advising that for various reasons people should use an alternative browser. I also try and restrict certain area's of my site (area's requiring a login) to browsers other than IE.

:)

[snova]

I've seen a website that recommended a browser, but for once it was Firefox.

Fortunately, many browsers can masquerade as others. Firefox has a plugin, Konqueror has a menu, and Opera has something somewhere (not sure of the exact position) that make it send different user agent ids. Konqueror can even pretend to be GoogleBot. :)

[lykwydchykyn]

Howabout sites that use jpegs and gifs for everything, including text, all hosted on photobucket.

That was the old-skool way of doing annoying websites, before there was flash.

Oh and write a javascript to scroll a message in my statusbar and pop up an alert box to confirm when I leave your website.

[Sealbhach]

Have a quick pop-up survey.


.

[mysticrider92]

Oh and write a javascript to scroll a message in my statusbar and pop up an alert box to confirm when I leave your website.

"If I wanted to stay on your webpage, I would not have pressed the close button, darn it!" Thankfully those alert boxes are only found on spam sites anyway.

I hate the sites that show some message about how your computer is infected with a virus, you need to run this scan. I ended up on one of those from a Google link (stupid tags describing the site wrong...), and it showed a Vista-like progress bar with a bunch of DLL file names being "scanned". Funny how my Ubuntu computer doesn't even have those files, and they aren't scanning anything...

[S0VERE1GN]

Howabout sites that use jpegs and gifs for everything, including text, all hosted on photobucket.

That was the old-skool way of doing annoying websites, before there was flash.

Oh and write a javascript to scroll a message in my statusbar and pop up an alert box to confirm when I leave your website.

Those were my favorites.



Ohhhh the memories.

[jamieh]

Congratulations!
You are our 1,000,000th visitor!
Click here to contact our prize department!!

Yeah something along those lines.

[jimi_hendrix]

randomly have popups and messageboxes come up

[cmay]

hire me as a developer:)

[beercz]

Bad spelling, grammar and punctuation (especially the ever increasing inappropriate use of apostrophes). If I find bad spelling, grammar and punctuation, I immediately "switch off" and go elsewhere.

Same applies to presentations incidentally.

[jamieh]

Create two webpages that keep redirecting to each other in an endless loop

[-grubby]

Create two webpages that keep redirecting to each other in an endless loop

Most browsers catch onto that rather quickly (with the exception of IE6)

[scragar]

Sites that demand javascript to work(or atleast until you give up, scan the page and produce a command line interaction tool using perl -- twitter = top offender for me)

Sites that update rarely, but don't provide an RSS feed like you should.

Sites that demand javascript.

Bad colour selections.

Sites that demand javascript.

Terrible/unreadable grammar and english( wot u meen i cna red it n u cnt cos u r redrd )

Sites that demand javascript.

Tables for layout(why?)

Sites that demand javascript.

People who use some huge 12,000px image, but think it's fine because they use
<img src='bigimage.png' heigh='10' width='10'>

Sites that demand javascript.

[zmjjmz]

Shopping sites that remove the items in your cart every ten seconds and pretend you're totally new (OfficeMax...)

[lykwydchykyn]

Tables for layout(why?)


Well, because after spending 10 hours and six pots of coffee to get that %$!!$^@ thing not to sit on top of that other @$#%!@$# thing in Internet !@$#% Explorer using CSS, sometimes it just makes sense.

c.f.:
http://humor.beecy.net/geeks/web-design/web-design.gif

[Ms_Angel_D]

c.f.:
http://humor.beecy.net/geeks/web-design/web-design.gif

:lolflag:

[avahi]

:lolflag:

:lolflag::lolflag::lolflag::lolflag::lolflag::lolf lag:

[wsonar]

Force users to use this device:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell


That is pretty funny

[calrogman]

<H1><blink>blahblahblah</blink></H1>


>=(

[billgoldberg]

Sites that have a huge ad on the front (blocked by adblock, but still) with a "continue to site" link.

Seems to be more popular than ever these days.

[beercz]

http://www.purple.com

[dragos240]

Make everything so complex that nothing works, add way too many spammy meta-tags, flash beyond anyone's use, too many annoying gif images, and other software barely compatible with any OS. That'll get some complaints.

[jamieh]

Flash interfaces and audio that you can't shut off. Check this one out:

http://westwoodplazatheatreandcafe.com/

It's a local theater that's actually really cool, but what a HORRIFIC website.

http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/eek.gif http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/eek.gif http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/eek.gif

Was that made in 1993 by a 10 year old? http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Eisenwinter]

Flash interfaces and audio that you can't shut off. Check this one out:

http://westwoodplazatheatreandcafe.com/

It's a local theater that's actually really cool, but what a HORRIFIC website.
That is the most horrible website I have ever been to.

I am now going to puke my guts out, excuse me.

[billgoldberg]

That is the most horrible website I have ever been to.

I am now going to puke my guts out, excuse me.

Agree.

What the hell were they thinking.

Just plain old xhtml without any sort of layout would be better.

----

Javascript links. What the hell are those all about?

[deanver]

pop-ups! pop-ups! pop-ups! :popcorn:

[zidit]

I think so, animate gif annoy the visitor so much.